


The Year-Wheel's Reunion

by Elke Tanzer (elke_tanzer)



Category: Mythology - Greek and Roman
Genre: F/M, Food As Sex Toys, If you only read one work by me, One of My Favorites, Requited Love, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, one of my best, recipient:Lily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:11:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elke_tanzer/pseuds/Elke%20Tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year, the young maiden walks the dark path toward the Land of the Dead, and every year, the woman rejoins her lover at path's end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Year-Wheel's Reunion

It has been a long half-year since she has been with her lover, and she walks steadily down the dark path. Her dainty footsteps started silent as she skipped her way across the dew-sparkling grass at her journey's beginning, but have shifted through a swishing whisper against honey-gold stalks with their gently nodding seed-heads, and then to the soft brittle crunch of the first touches of frost on the dried grasses underfoot.

The grey veil of the underworld swirls around her, reaching out with chill curls of bracing fog in a tender caress. She pauses once to bid one soft farewell with a gesture to all the gentle tending that she has known, and does not look back as her steps quicken and the hoar-frost surrounds her.

She breathes deep, and slows but does not pause her steps as she reaches up to unpin her hair. It tumbles loose and wild as she shakes it to fall around her shoulders. She twirls once, pivoting on her toe, and then again, for the sheer freedom of it. Her cheeks show no embarrassment as she flushes, her lips reddening and her body beginning to move with the knowing grace of the full bloom of womanhood. She loosens the clasp at her shoulder, and her maiden's dress slides like water down over her hips.

When she steps out of it, she barely notices as it immediately starts to decay, breaking down and disappearing into the path, but she is glad to finally reach the first stepping-stones that make the path easier. Soon she finds the welcoming paving stones worn smooth with her walking, and she laughs with the basic joy of knowing, of transforming.

Her eyes glisten as she becomes one with the darkness, and she reaches to that familiar power and clothes herself with the sparkling glow of moonlight and the colors of gathering nightfall.

He has left out a woven basket and a goblet at the first marker, and a perfect, ruby pomegranate at each marker thereafter. At her touch, the goblet fills with dark, rich wine. She drinks deep, and the goblet never empties. The path steepens, downhill and up again, and still her pace quickens.

By the time she arrives, the basket is filled to brimming and she revels in her full aspect.

She bends to place the goblet on the ground beside their bower, and as she straightens, the goblet sinks to become one with the gentle slope. A rivulet of wine overflows its lip to trickle down the slope and into the mists, its rich color deepening as the trickle becomes a black crystal stream. She can hear the splash of it on rocks as the overflow gathers momentum down the hill, and knows that once more the dark glassy surface of the lake below is rising, replenishing.

He stands silent to greet her, robed in ebony and starlight. She reaches a slender hand into the basket and withdraws the most vibrant of vibrant reds. She presents him the basket, which he places aside as she breaks open the ripe fruit to free the jewel seeds within.

The tart juice of a seed broken in that first opening flows down her chin as she takes her first mouthful, and again with her second. When he steps forward that last distance to close the gap between them, she takes him into her arms and kisses him breathless, passing him a seed, and then two more, with her tongue. The fog swirls around them, and the rush of the dark waterfall has returned to its once-familiar roar, as they kiss, oblivious to the changes their rising passion evokes all around them.

At a brief pause she takes another bite of her pomegranate, then another, peeling the pulp and rind back with nails and teeth. He reaches one gentle hand to her breast, and she, in kind, slips her pale hand into the folds of his robe to find his hardness waiting, wanting... but his soft sigh in response turns into a deep groan as she rakes her nails lightly up and down his length.

For a moment they pause, forehead to forehead, just long enough. "I've missed you."

"And I you."

"Yes."

He reaches for another pomegranate, draws her down onto the soft bedding, breaks the second fruit open ungently above her abdomen, scattering seeds up along her belly, crushing many of the seeds to drizzle juice from one nipple to the other. She stretches unhurriedly as he begins seeking out each tart taste with his mouth, his soft lips and lapping tongue and nipping teeth bringing her upward and upward.

She soars on sheer sensation, each eddy and updraft reaching new heights, and she loses herself, and finds herself, again and again.

She clutches him, slowing her reach for each touch, diverting his attention as she finds her own ways to reclaim every expanse of his skin, and they roll together in their bower until she straddles him, her long hair tangling around his shoulders as they kiss and claim, making up for lost time. Panting, the wanting and the _knowing_ of each other...

His back arches into her embrace, and she drives him higher and higher, drawing out the desperation she knows lurks just below the surface of him. When the raw need of him overflows and he can do nothing but reach for her, incoherent desire and untempered power thrumming around and through him, she hums her approval in response. He gasps and moans, writhing beneath her, and his eyes seek hers in one searing look which burns through the last memories of their time apart, her girlhood and his mourning of being without her.

They speak as one, and the world pauses, "Yes."

And with that, she takes him, and he takes her, and they give themselves spending; their oneness rebounds within and against the darkness, tingeing the swirling fog and the black torrent like a promise of sweet death and rebirth.

The underworld rejoices... its queen has come home.


End file.
